Monday, May 26, 2014

I love the way it grows so happily in mostly-shady situations. Some of mine grows where it only gets about 3 hours of sunlight a day.

Swiss chard growing beside my house. It only getsabout 3 hours of sunlight, and that in the afternoon.

I love the taste of it.

I love that in my Southern garden, I can grow it most of the year.

I love that Swiss chard is pretty enough to grow in the front yard garden.

The only time I can't grow Swiss chard is when it is going to seed. Luckily, this year, my son's Junior Master Gardeners group took the Swiss chard they had growing out and I was able to plant this plant to tide me over until the seeds come in and my baby Swiss chard plants are big enough to harvest.

Swiss chard given to our family by the leaders of the Junior Master Gardeners

Monday, May 19, 2014

I stored the peaches in the garage to finish ripening,
to lay them flat and to keep them out of the way
while I worked on other peaches.

The picture above is the only one I took of the wonderful, amazing beautiful harvest of peaches my 3 year old tree gave me. Before it was over, that 8 foot table was covered with peaches, even though
I was peeling, cutting, removing seeds and processing about a basket-full a day.

All told, it took me almost 2 weeks to completely process 71 pounds of peaches. I would work on them at the table every day for as long as I could stand it. My hands got sore and crampy from peeling and cutting that many small peaches. My shoulders cramped from sitting in basically the same position for hours at a time. Thank goodness I had Young Living Panaway and Young Living Stress Away. I used Young Living Panaway on my hands to relieve the cramping and I used the Young Living Stress Away to get rid of a massive headache I got from sitting in that one position for hours on end. (And I do mean massive. The headache was one that 2 Aleve normally wouldn't touch. Stress Away relieved it in less than an hour.)

peach jam

I ended up with 3 pints of peach-pineapple jam with almond extract (totally yum!), and 13 pints of peach jam, and 5 really full gallon bags of frozen peaches. And the whole family ate peaches all day long for the last two weeks.

I am really happy about this, because this is the first harvest for me that really feels abundant. I have been grateful for every harvest I have ever gotten, but I would read other blogs and think, "That isn't how it happens here." So I am really glad for something that feels abundant.